


The Real Deal

by Morgana



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dom/sub, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 07:12:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/808760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morgana/pseuds/Morgana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's something about them that Jess can't quite figure out</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Real Deal

"Okay, that's it. I'm studied out. I say we call it a night and hit Chaos, see if we can't find a little action."  
  
"Jesus, Brady, do you ever think about anything besides getting laid?"  
  
The young man cocked his head to one side for a moment, then grinned. "Not really. But I bet you could take my mind off it, Jana - what do you say?"  
  
"As if," she snorted, smacking him in the arm with her notebook. "And Chaos is lame. If we're going anywhere, let's make it good. What about The Dust-Up?"  
  
Jessica laughed quietly at the emphatic chorus of no's that answered her. "Why don't we let our host pick?" she suggested.  
  
"That works for me," Brady agreed. "How about it, Winchester? Where do you want to go?"  
  
"Not Chaos," Sam told him, lips quirking up at the corners. He glanced over at the doorway to the small kitchen for a moment, then said, "MacElroy's."  
  
It was an unusual choice - most of the college students preferred places that offered loud music and designer drinks. MacElroy's was the kind of place Jess' brother liked to go, dark and closed-off, more of a bar than a club, but they'd agreed to go with Sam's choice, so Jess smiled at him and said, "That sounds good to me."  
  
Sam nodded and closed his book, then stood up and called, "Dean!" Almost immediately, Dean appeared in the doorway. "We're going to MacElroy's," Sam informed him.  
  
A smile that could only be described as devilish crossed Dean's face. "Yeah? Be ready in a few minutes." He vanished back into the kitchen as the rest of them started packing up, shoving books and notebooks into backpacks, while Sam walked over to lean against the kitchen door. Jess watched him reach out to wrap a hand around the back of Dean's neck, tugging him close as he walked by. She couldn't hear what he said, but Dean nodded and grinned at him in response.  
  
Dean had been the subject of some pretty intense speculation in their study group ever since Sam had offered to host the first meeting almost two months ago. Dean Winchester had introduced himself as Sam's brother, but nobody with eyes believed they were related. Not when they'd all seen him greet Sam with a kiss that no brother ever gave another. And brothers didn't watch each other with hot eyes the way Sam often did Dean. And then there was the way Dean licked his lips almost every time Sam walked into the room... No, the two of them were definitely  _not_  brothers. There was a story there, but Jess was willing to bet that nobody but the two of them would ever know it.  
  
Not that she wasn't dying to know just the same.  
  
MacElroy's was pretty quiet when they got there, so they must've either missed the usual crowd or gotten there ahead of them. While Jana sat down with a group of guys who seemed dazzled enough by her smile to keep her in drinks all night and Brady, as per usual, headed straight for the bar to try to coax the pretty bartender into bed, Sam handed Dean a twenty dollar bill and found an empty booth near the pool tables. Jess tagged along with him and it wasn't until Dean returned from the bar with two beers and a margarita that she hadn't asked for that she realized how much time she'd been spending around them. Or maybe that was just Dean - he often brought them snacks or drinks without being asked, slipping into the room and leaving with the unobtrusive stealth that Jess' mother always said the very best servants possessed. Come to think of it, Sam reacted to Dean when he did that a lot like her mother did, with no acknowledgment aside from a little nod that said that he'd seen and appreciated the service.  
  
Dean was very different from her mother's servants, though. They didn't join the family to watch movies, for one thing, and if for some reason they had, they would never have sat at her mother's feet and leaned against her knees like Dean did with Sam. And her mother would never have dreamed of petting her servants like some kind of pampered pet the way Sam did while the movie played. She wasn't even going to think of what her mother's reaction to a suggestion that the servants join them for a night out would've been.  
  
"Earth to Jess." Sam's voice broke into her thoughts, and Jess pulled herself back to reality to see him grinning at her. "Everything okay?"  
  
"Yeah, sorry. I was just... thinking, I guess." She felt her cheeks heat under the scrutiny of his gaze and braced herself for him to ask what she'd been thinking about, but Sam just nodded and took a drink of his beer, eyes flicking past her shoulder for a second before he looked back at her.  
  
Jess tried wildly to think about something to talk about, something that didn't involve her blurting out her need to know what the hell was going on with him and Dean. "Are you going home after finals?"  
  
Sam shook his head. "Dean and I aren't exactly welcome."  
  
"Oh." She didn't ask why, not wanting to stir up unpleasant memories. Sam's parents must not be the accepting kind, and Dean didn't really seem like the kind of guy to stay home longer than he had to. There was something about him that marked him as different, like he hadn't even really had - oh! Jess' eyes widened as she put the pieces together in a rush: Sam calling Dean his brother but treating him like something else entirely, Dean's ability to make himself practically invisible, the way Sam talked about them not being welcome as a unit, their almost unnatural closeness that could only come with having known each other for most of their lives... she couldn't believe she hadn't figured it out until just now!  
  
Dean must've been a foster child, probably grew up in Sam's home, which would definitely explain his parents disapproving of their relationship. It was like something straight out of Desperate Housewives, a storyline so ludicrous that Jess knew she would've rolled her eyes and laughed if she'd seen it on TV, but it was anything but funny when the real people involved were her friends. And when they had nowhere to go for Christmas because of it.  
  
She opened her mouth to ask Sam if he and Dean wanted to go home with her for the break, but a clatter from the pool tables cut her off before she could get the words out. Jess turned around to see a man stalking stiffly away while Dean openly laughed at him and called after him, "Next time, you buy the shots  _before_  I clean you out, man!"  
  
Jess could hardly believe it. In the few months that she'd known Sam, and through him, Dean, she'd never seen Dean be anything but polite, but here he was, openly gloating over some poor guy losing money at pool. Money that Dean had apparently won from him. When he noticed her watching him, she half-expected him to duck his head or blush, but instead he winked at her and tossed a shot back, then swatted the waitress on the butt when he put the empty glass back on her tray.  
  
Had Dean had some kind of stroke or something?!? Jess looked back at Sam to see if he'd noticed how strange Dean was acting, but he was just watching the pool tables with a little smile, as if he'd seen this exact scene before. "Um... Sam?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
She took a sip of her drink, reaching for a little liquid courage before she said anything. "Is Dean - is he okay? He's acting kind of... weird."  
  
Sam chuckled softly. "He's just being Dean," he told her, never taking his eyes off the other man. Jess glanced back again in time to see Dean swagger around the pool table and lean over to take a shot.  
  
"I see." Of course, she didn't really see at all, and when Sam looked right at her, she knew he was well aware of that.  
  
"You're wondering which one's real," he said evenly.   
  
Jess could feel two circles of heat burning on her cheeks, but she nodded anyway. Polite protests wouldn't do her any good, not when Sam had obviously had this conversation before. "I'm sorry. I know it's none of my business, but he just seems so... different like this."  
  
Sam raised his beer for a long swallow before he set it down and focused on her again. "And you're trying to figure out if I've done something to him to make him act like he does at home, right?"  
  
Oh, God. Put like that, it sounded like she thought he was some kind of Svengali who was playing with Dean's mind. But any attempt to explain would probably just lodge her foot more firmly in her mouth, so she opted for taking a drink instead and hoping her red cheeks would speak for her.  
  
Thankfully, Sam seemed to speak embarrassed co-ed fluently, because he smiled and said, "Dean's my sub."  
  
"Like black leather and whips and chains?" Jess blurted out, then clapped a hand over her mouth. She was sure she was going to end up permanently red by the end of the night as she mumbled, "Sorry."  
  
But Sam was laughing too hard to really hear her. "Oh, God, that's priceless. I should get him something like that for Christmas, just to mess with him." His eyes were sparkling with amusement as he wound down. "God, I can just imagine what Dean would say if he knew about that."  
  
"Please don't -" Jess started to beg, but Sam held a hand up to stop her.  
  
"Don't worry, I won't. Anyway, I guess the best way to explain it is that I make the rules and he follows them. Dean likes structure; he wants me to be in charge, and luckily for both of us, I like being in control. But that doesn't make him my slave or anything like that - he's got his own mind and as long as he's obeying the rules, he gets to decide how he wants to act." Sam shrugged. "The whole being a jackass when he's winning is just part of Dean."  
  
It was hard to believe. If she'd had to think of the last person she could imagine being submissive, it would be Dean - or at least, the Dean that was currently goading yet another person into a game over at the pool tables. When she thought about it, Jess realized that the way he usually acted when the study group was there fit the whole role pretty perfectly. Wasn't that why she'd been so surprised by his behavior tonight, because it was nothing like she'd seen from him before?  
  
"Jess? You okay?" She snapped out of her momentary daze to see Sam staring at her with clearly worried eyes. He probably thought she was about to call him a pervert or something, maybe right before she went off to tell the rest of their friends everything he'd just told her.  
  
She smiled, trying to help ease some of those concerns. "Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry, was just thinking that he's not really -" She gestured, trying to convey her meaning without words that might give offense.  
  
Luckily, Sam seemed to be pretty hard to offend. "A typical sub? No, he's definitely one of a kind." He looked past her at Dean, eyes softening at the sight of him strutting around the table like he owned it.  
  
"Um... the necklace he wears," Jess ventured, "Is that, like, his collar or something?" She hoped Sam didn't mind her asking, but she'd wondered about it ever since she'd seen it.  
  
Sam grinned. "Something like that. It basically says he's mine, so yeah, I guess you could call it that." He finished off his beer and looked over at Dean again. "Listen, I hope you don't mind, but I'm gonna -" He waved one hand towards the pool table and Jess nodded.  
  
"No problem." He slipped out and went to join Dean, and Jess turned to watch, and this time she noticed how Dean dropped his gaze when Sam walked up, bowing his head before Sam said something and he looked up with a smile. Jess moved around to the seat Sam had vacated, watching them and thinking about what Sam had told her while she sipped her drink. The more she thought about it, the more sense it made - if Dean really was Sam's foster brother, he probably liked the rules because they made him feel safe, like Sam wasn't going to leave him the way his own parents probably had.  
  
"Hey, Jess! Quit hanging out over there by yourself - come join us!" Jana called, and Jess picked her drink up and went to join her friend and the cute fraternity brothers she was sitting with. She was introduced to a junior named Greg, who proved to be pretty interesting, and from the way he smiled at her, Jess was pretty sure he was going to ask her out at some point that night.  
  
He ended up asking for her phone number instead. Jess was happy to give it to him, and she was hunting around for a pen in her purse when Sam walked up. "Hey, Jess, you ready to go?"  
  
"Sure, just one second," she replied absently, her attention on finding the pen. When she looked up, she caught Greg's puzzled frown and she laughed. "This is my friend Sam," she told him, stressing the  _friend_  part of the introduction ever so slightly.   
  
She knew she'd gotten it right when Greg relaxed and held his hand out. "How's it going, man? I'm Greg."  
  
"Good to meet you," Sam said, shaking hands with him before glancing at Jess. "We'll be out in the parking lot when you're ready, okay?"  
  
"Yeah, I'll be out in a few minutes," she told him, scribbling her phone number down and handing it to Greg. "Here you go."  
  
"So have you guys been friends for a while?"  
  
"Me and Sam? Sure - he's in my study group for English Lit." Jess wondered if he was fishing to try to make sure she was single, and decided it couldn't hurt to let him know she was. "He's a great guy; his boyfriend's pretty lucky."  
  
Greg looked startled. "Boyfriend?"  
  
"Yeah, but then he's pretty great himself, so I guess you could say they're both lucky." She wondered if that made things clear enough, then decided that if it didn't, Greg was too thick to even consider dating.   
  
Thankfully, he proved not to be a lost cause. "Sounds like they both are," he agreed. "You know, so many people spend so much of their lives looking for the right person that it's got to be pretty cool to have friends who are the real deal. Kind of gives you hope, you know?"  
  
Jess hadn't thought of it like that, but when Greg pointed out, she felt a comforting sort of warmth swell up inside her. After all, if Sam and Dean had found each other and managed to make things work against all sorts of odds, there had to be hope for her and Jana and everyone else, right? "Yeah, it does," she said. Jess really kind of wanted to stay and talk some more, but she knew Sam and Dean were waiting for her, so she motioned towards the door. "I should -"  
  
"Yeah, okay." Greg tucked her phone number into his pocket. "You, uh, you mind if I call you tomorrow?"  
  
"Of course not." With that, it seemed easier to leave, so Jess said goodnight to Greg and headed out to the parking lot.  
  
When she stepped outside, she could see them almost immediately, but it was obvious that Sam and Dean had eyes for nobody but each other. Sam was braced against the big black car, Dean standing between his slightly spread legs, looking up at Sam like he was his entire world wrapped up in one person. And Sam was looking down at Dean the same way, smiling at him like he was infinitely precious. Jess watched one long finger stroke over the necklace Dean wore, saw Dean smile and pull Sam down for a kiss, and she thought about what Greg had said. The real deal. Yes, they were definitely that, and Jess hoped that someday there would be someone looking at her the way they looked at each other, someone in whose arms she felt as safe as Dean clearly did in Sam's, someone who held her as tenderly as Sam did Dean.  
  
She'd never really considered herself a romantic before, but watching the two of them, seeing the real deal right in front of her, Jess thought that it would take someone a lot harder and colder than she was to wish them anything but the happy ending they deserved.


End file.
